How to have two skies in one level?

Development Rendering
, , ,
1

I’m trying to set up a level where the player is in a night area and then they pass through a portal that takes them to a day area seamlessly. I have the portal but no way for the night and day area to exist in the same space. Any ideas?

It can’t just switch to day or night when the player passes through, because the portal is transparent. They need to be able to see through the portal and see that the other side is day or night.

2

A few thoughts to start with (not yet a complete answer):

  1. You could have a day skysphere and a night skysphere, and set one visible, and the other invisible. Swap their visibility going through the portal. That still doesn’t solve the problem of varying the lighting though…
  2. You could duplicate the skysphere and level layout, and set them really far apart, so the skyspheres don’t touch, and teleport the character between when entering the portal. One would be the day layout, and one would be the night layout.
  3. It may be possible to edit the parameters of the single skysphere, fog, etc… to transition from day and night.

It might be possible to show a video on the portal of the view on the other side from your character perspective with approach 2, but not sure how this would be done… Hopefully someone else has further insight here…

3

Regarding #2, can you have two skyboxes in one level? I thought they just encapsulated the whole level so no matter how far you zoom out you are within it.

4

Yes, you can have two skyspheres in one level. I have done it accidentally. They are really big, but you can zoom out beyond the skysphere (which happens if you double click the skysphere in the objects - double click something else to zoom back in). am not sure about if there is a way to adjust the lighting differently between the two skyspheres though.